Monday, October 13, 2014

Journal #1: Chapters 1-3: How the web works, and big concepts to know

Robbins.  (2012, August).  Learning Web Design, 4th Edition.  Retrieved from http://0-proquest.safaribooksonline.com.opac.library.csupomona.edu/book/web-design-and-development/9781449337513


Summary:  The first three chapters of this text emphasize the basic knowledge one should have regarding what the web is, and what the web does.   In particular, chapter one discusses the importance of the User Interface, making your website easily accessible and enjoyable for the user.  It also discusses some technicalities of web and graphics design, and several language tools that help to create your web site such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and how these separate entities ultimately come together to create an even more appealing webpage.  

Chapter 2 discusses the basic components of web pages.  Specifically, how a specific URL helps to retrieve information from the web server, the basic components of a URL (the protocol, name of site, and absolute path) and how the anatomy of a web page (the HTML, CSS and JavaScript files) can affect the display of your website.  It also discusses how a web browser parses an HTML file, or in other words, how it reads the HTML text to recreate a webpage. 

The final chapter in this section discusses further the important elements of HTML, CSS and JavaScript in basic web design, and how the web site you create must be able to be processed quickly and efficiently over a wide range of different devices such as laptops, desktops, and portable and mobile devices.  It is important that when designing your web page, one keep in mind the concept of progressive enhancement, meaning to start with the most rudimentary browsers, and then lay upon them several, more advanced styling and design methods, so that even those with the most basic of devices can benefit from your webpage.   It also discusses the importance of accessibility for those with visual, hearing and mobility constraints, so that they too can benefit from the web with similar capacity to those without disabilities. 

Q 1:  What three elements can be used to create a web page that is efficient, interactive and appealing to a user? 
The basic language for a web page is HTML, which displays headings and paragraphs on your page.  In order to add color, bold or emphasized text, and to rearrange the position of your text on the web page, CSS documents, or cascading styling sheets, can be added to enhance the visual appeal of your page.  To take things even further, JavaScript can be used to add dynamic elements to your page, such as real time interaction that jumps from page to page when the audience clicks on different links on your web page.  

Q2:  How does the speed of a website affect the audience using it, and what are some strategies that can be used to improve the speed performance of your website? 
The speed of a website it a pretty big deal. According to Robbins, several studies have been conducted showing that if it takes longer than 2seconds for a page to load, a webpage can dramatically lose a great number of audience members, and can ensure they will not return again to your webpage.   Several strategies such as keeping file sizes small, and limiting the number of requests sent to the server can help increase the speed with which your web page loads.   This can be achieved by keeping HTML, CSS and JavaScript to a minimum, and adding scripts so that they load in parallel with other page assets and don't block rendering. 



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